Portfolio Insights:“Vanderbilt provides financial aid to eligible students based upon documented financial need and/or merit to help cover their cost of attendance, including tuition, education fees, room, board, books and course materials, plus travel and acceptable miscellaneous expenses. This financial assistance is funded from/through institutional resources, gifts, endowment income, and various externally sponsored/funded (federal, state, third party, etc.) aid programs. Beginning in the fall of 2009, need-based student financial aid packages awarded to eligible incoming and returning undergraduate students have not included any need-based loans. The amount of need-based loans that students would have been offered prior to the fall of 2009 to meet their full demonstrated financial need is now replaced annually with Vanderbilt-funded and/or other sources of grant (gift) assistance while continuing to meet their full demonstrated need.” (Source)

Top Vanderbilt University Endowment Fund (Vanderbilt University Office of Investments) Headlines:

1) Vanderbilt’s endowment, which at about $3.4 billion in 2012 put it in the top-25 of university endowments, still pales in comparison to those of other universities that meet full need without loans, meaning much of the aid it spends still comes from revenue it would like to spend on other aspects of the institution.

McCarty said one aspect that has helped foster strong fund raising for need-based aid is the fact that the university secures a good applicant pool and enrollment, meaning it has less need to compete for top students. “I’ve been really impressed and reassured that our most generous donors buy into the notion that our pool of applicants has now been developed at Vanderbilt to the point that anyone you admit deserves to be supported by a scholarship,” he said. (Source)

Mr. Hall will join the Nashville, Tenn., university on Sept. 3. He is replacing Matthew Wright, who left in January. The university’s chief financial officer, Brett Sweet, has been taking on Mr. Wright’s duties in the interim, according to Mr. Patterson.

Mr. Hall is now head of public securities at Duke University. Neither he nor Michael J. Schoenfeld, vice president for government affairs and government relations, could be immediately reached for comment. (Source)

3) Vanderbilt University has taken steps to withdraw its $26 million investment in EMVest, formerly Emergent Asset Management, an agricultural corporation with farms in five sub-Saharan African countries, including Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe and whose investors included Harvard University. EMVest was accused of “land grabbing,” or taking over agricultural land used by local communities through exploitative practices and using it for large-scale commercial export farming, by the Oakland Institute, a policy think-tank based in Oakland, California, in a June 2011 report publicized in the Guardian (UK). This historic divestment marks the first full divestment made by Vanderbilt in response to student pressure, a first in university history after its refusal to fully divest itself of funds operating in Apartheid-era South Africa. (Source)

4) The market value for Vanderbilt University’s endowment funds increased by 6.2 percent from 2009 to 2010, according to data released Friday by the National Association of College and University Business Officers and Commonfund Institute.

Vanderbilt ranked 21st nationally in endowment size, with $3.04 billion in funds, up from $2.87 billion in 2009. (Source)

5) Vanderbilt University’s endowment is a permanent fund made up of gifts to the university that are pooled together and then invested. In accordance with a payout policy, amounts are distributed annually from the endowment for the purposes designated by each respective donor. Vanderbilt’s endowment consistently has performed well, and recent returns continue to place us in the top tier for college, university and foundation endowments. (Source)

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